Summary

For undergraduate course in Modern Art, Origins of Modernism, Art Since 1945, Contemporary Art and other courses focusing on art in the 20th century. Long considered the survey of modern art, this engrossing and liberally illustrated text traces the development of trends and influences in painting, sculpture, photography and architecture from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. Retaining its comprehensive nature and chronological approach, it now comes thoroughly reworked by Michael Bird, an experienced art history editor and writer, with refreshing new analyses, a considerably expanded picture program, and a more absorbing and unified narrative.

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments

x

The Sources of Modern Painting

1

(14)

Changing Perspectives: From Renaissance to Baroque

2

(3)

Making Sense of a Turbulent World: Neoclassicism and Romanticism

5

(8)

Academic Art and the Salon

13

(2)

Realism, Impressionism, and Early Photography

15

(31)

New Ways of Seeing: Photography and its Influence

15

(6)

A Chastened Vision: Realism in Art

21

(3)

Seizing the Moment: Impressionism and the Avant-Garde

24

(13)

Nineteenth-Century Art in the United States

37

(9)

Post-Impressionism

46

(26)

The Poetic Science of Color: Seurat and the Neo-Impressionists

47

(3)

Form and Nature: Paul Cezanne

50

(5)

A Visual Language of the Heart and Soul: Symbolism

55

(5)

Innocence and Experience: Gauguin and Van Gogh

60

(5)

A New Generation of Prophets: The Nabis

65

(7)

The Origins of Modern Architecture and Design

72

(10)

Palaces of Iron and Glass: The Influence of Industry

72

(3)

``A Return to Simplicity'': The Arts and Crafts Movement and Experimental Architecture

75

(2)

``Form Follows Function'': The Chicago School and the Origins of the Skyscraper

77

(5)

Art Nouveau and the Beginnings of Expressionism

82

(15)

Natural Forms for the Machine Age: The Art Nouveau Aesthetic

82

(9)

Toward Expressionism: Late Nineteenth-Century Painting beyond France

91

(6)

The Origins of Modern Sculpture

97

(11)

The Painter--Sculptors: Daumier, Degas, and Gauguin

98

(1)

An Art Reborn: Auguste Rodin

99

(6)

Exploring New Possibilities: Claudel, Maillol, Bourdelle, and Rosso

105

(3)

Fauvism

108

(16)

``Purity of Means'' in Practice: Henri Matisse's Early Career

108

(7)

``Wild Beasts Tamed'': Derain, Vlaminck, and Dufy

115

(3)

Colors of the Spiritual Eye: Georges Rouault

118

(1)

The Belle Epoque on Camera: The Lumiere Brothers and Lartigue

119

(1)

Modernism on a Grand Scale: Matisse's Art after Fauvism

120

(4)

Expressionism in Germany

124

(21)

Making it Personal: Modersohn-Becker and Nolde

124

(2)

Joining the Revolution: Die Brucke

126

(5)

Graphic Impact: Expressionist Prints

131

(3)

The Spiritual Dimension: Der Blaue Reiter

134

(7)

Self-Examination: Expressionism in Austria

141

(4)

The Figurative Tradition in Early Twentieth-Century Sculpture

145

(11)

A Parallel Medium: The Sculpture of Henri Matisse

146

(2)

Developments in Germany: Lehmbruck, Kolbe, Banlach, and Kollwitz

148

(2)

Forms of the Essential: Constantin Brancusi

150

(6)

Cubism

156

(37)

Taking Possession: Picasso's Early Career

156

(8)

Beyond Fauvism: Braque's Early Career

164

(3)

``Two Mountain Climbers Roped Together'': Braque, Picasso, and the Development of Cubism

167

(9)

Constructed Spaces: Cubist Sculpture

176

(6)

An Adaptable Idiom: Developments in Cubist Painting in Paris

182

(5)

Other Agendas: Orphism and Other Experimental Art in Paris, 1910--14

187

(6)

Futurism, Abstraction in Russia, and de Stiil

193

(26)

``Running on Shrapnel'': Futurism in Italy

193

(6)

A World Ready for Change: Early Abstraction in Russia

199

(7)

Utopian Visions: Russian Constructivism

206

(7)

Clarity, Certainty, and Order: De Stijl in the Netherlands

213

(6)

Early Twentieth-Century Architecture

219

(17)

Modernism in Harmony with Nature: Frank Lloyd Wright

219

(4)

Temples for the Modern City: American Classicism 1900--15

223

(1)

New Simplicity Versus Art Nouveau: Vienna Before World War I

224

(2)

Tradition and Innovation: The German Contribution to Modern Architecture

226

(3)

Toward the International Style: The Netherlands and Belgium

229

(5)

New Materials, New Visions: France and Italy

234

(2)

From fantasy to Dada and the New Objectivity

236

(31)

Truth Pursued through the Dreamworld: Chagall and the Metaphysical School

236

(5)

The World Turned Upside Down: The Birth of Dada

241

(5)

A Further Shore: New York Dada

246

(8)

``Art is Dead'': Dada in Germany

254

(5)

Idealism and Disgust: The ``New Objectivity'' in Germany

259

(6)

Dada Divided: Developments in Paris

265

(2)

The School of Paris After World War I

267

(21)

Eloquent Figuration: Les Maudits

267

(5)

Dedication to Color: Matisse's Later Career

272

(5)

Celebrating the Good Life: Dufy's Later Career

277

(1)

Eclectic Mastery: Picasso After the High-Point of Cubism

278

(5)

Sensuous Analysis: Braque's Later Career

283

(2)

Austerity and Elegance: Leger, Ozenfant, and Le Corbusier

285

(3)

Surrealism

288

(41)

Breton and the Background to Surrealism

288

(2)

``Art is a Fruit'': Arp's Later Career

290

(2)

Hybrid Menageries: Ernst's Surrealist Techniques

292

(3)

``Night, Music, and Stars'': Miro' and Organic--Abstract Surrealism

295

(3)

Methodical Anarchy: Andre Masson

298

(1)

Enigmatic Landscapes: Yves Tanguy

299

(2)

``A Laboratory for New Ideas'': Surrealism and the Americas

301

(2)

``The Association of Delirious Phenomena'': Salvador Dali

303

(4)

Three Northern European Surrealists: Magritte, Delvaux, and Bellmer

307

(3)

Women and Surrealism: Oppenheim, Tanning, and Carrington

310

(2)

Never Quite ``One of Ours'': Picasso and Surrealism

312

(7)

Pioneer of a New Iron Age: Julio Gonzalez

319

(1)

Surrealism's Sculptural Language: Giacometti's Early Career

320

(2)

Bizarre Juxtapositions: Photography and Surrealism

322

(7)

Modern Architecture Between the Wars

329

(14)

The Building as Entity: The Bauhaus

329

(2)

Audacious Lightness: The Architecture of Gropius

331

(2)

``Machines for Living'': The International Style

333

(4)

A Return to Innovation: Developments in American Architecture

337

(6)

International Abstraction Between the Wars

343

(28)

``The Core from which Everything Emanates'': International Constructivism and the Bauhaus

343

(13)

A Determined Minority: Abstract Artists in Paris

356

(5)

American Connections: Mondrian and Calder

361

(4)

Responses to International Abstraction: Artists in Britain

365

(6)

American Art Before World War II

371

(39)

America Undisguised: The Eight and Social Criticism

371

(4)

A Rallying Place for Modernism: 291 Gallery and the Stieglitz Circle

375

(8)

The Europeans Are Coming: The Armory Show

383

(1)

Sharpening the Focus on Color and Form: Synchromism and Precisionism

383

(4)

Painting the American Scene: Regionalists and Social Realists

387

(8)

Documents of an Era: American Photographers Between the Wars

395

(3)

Black History and Modern Painting: Bearden and Lawrence

398

(1)

Social Protest and Personal Pain: Mexican Artists

399

(4)

The Avant-Garde Advances: Toward American Abstract Art

403

(5)

Sculpture in America Between the Wars

408

(2)

Abstract Expressionism and the New American Sculpture

410

(36)

Entering a New Arena: Modes of Abstract Expressionism

410

(1)

The Picture as Event: Experiments in Gestural Painting

411

(12)

Complex Simplicities: Color Field Painting

423

(10)

Drawing in Steel: Constructed Sculpture

433

(4)

Textures of the Surreal: Biomorphic Sculpture and Assemblage

437

(5)

Expressive Vision: Developments in American Photography

442

(4)

Postwar European Art

446

(32)

Revaluations and Violations: Figurative Art in France

446

(9)

A Different Art: Abstraction in France

455

(6)

``Pure Creation'': Concrete Art

461

(1)

Postwar Juxtapositions: Figuration and Abstraction in Italy and Spain

462

(5)

``Forget It and Start Again'': The CoBrA Artists and Hundertwasser

467

(4)

Figures in the Landscape: British Painting and Sculpture

471

(5)

Marvels of Daily Life: European Photographers

476

(2)

Pop Art and Europe's New Realism

478

(45)

``This is Tomorrow'': Pop Art in Britain

478

(4)

Signs of the Times: Neo-Dada in the United States

482

(6)

Getting Closer to Life: Happenings and Environments

488

(5)

``Just Look at the Surface'': The Imagery of Everyday Life

493

(11)

Poetics of the ``New Gomorrah'': West Coast Artists

504

(5)

``Extroversion is the Rule'': Europe's New Realism

509

(8)

Personal Documentaries: The Snapshot Aesthetic in American Photography

517

(6)

Sixties Abstraction

523

(38)

Drawing the Veil: Post-Painterly Color Field Abstraction

523

(6)

At an Oblique Angle: Diebenkorn and Twombly

529

(2)

Forming the Unit: Hard-Edge Painting

531

(5)

Seeing Things: Op Art

536

(2)

New Media Mobilized: Motion and Light

538

(5)

The Limits of Modernism: Minimalist Sculpture and Painting

543

(17)

Complex Unities: Photography and Minimalism

560

(1)

The Second Wave of International Style Architecture

561

(27)

The Avant-Garde Diaspora: Architecture in the 1930s

561

(1)

``The Quiet Unbroken Wave'': The Later Work of Wright and Le Corbusier

``Complexity and Contradiction'': The Reaction Against Modernism Sets In

656

(2)

In Praise of ``Messy Vitality'': Postmodernist Eclecticism

658

(6)

Ironic Grandeur: Postmodernism and History

664

(8)

What Is a Building?: Deconstruction

672

(3)

Structure as Metaphor: Architectural Abstractions

675

(3)

Flexible Spaces: Architecture and Urbanism

678

(7)

The Retrospective Eighties

685

(45)

Codes of Context: Appropriation

685

(8)

Primal Passions: Neo-Expressionism

693

(11)

The Challenge of Photography in 1980s Art

704

(2)

Searing Statements: Expressive (if not Expressionist) Art

706

(3)

Wall of Fame: Graffiti and Cartoon Artists

709

(3)

Postmodern Arenas: Installation Art

712

(46)

In the Empire of Signs: Varieties of Neo-Geo

758

The Sum of Many Parts: Abstraction in the 1980s

722

(4)

Strangely Familiar: British and American Sculpture

726

(4)

Resistance and Resolution

730

(46)

Contested Visions: Art and Politics circa 1990

730

(2)

Mining the Museum: Art and Institutions

732

(4)

The Postmodern ``I'': The Artist as Individual

736

(12)

The Postmodern ``We'': The Artist and Society

748

(10)

Reprise and Reinterpretation: The Art of Art History

758

(2)

Considering Nature: New Visions of Landscape

760

(4)

Meeting Points: Painting and Sculpture as Social (ized) Spaces

764

(6)

The Consequences of Tradition: Pictorialism and Sculpture

770

(3)

Think Before You Buy: Art and Cultural Industry

773

(3)

Bibliography

776

(23)

Glossary

799

(3)

Index

802

(24)

Credits

826

Excerpts

At the start of the twenty-first century, the term "modern art" already has something of a venerable ring to it. It has joined other capacious art historical categories, such as "Renaissance" or "Romanticism," which, though they may usefully serve to give shape to broad contours of art history, become less clear in meaning and more open to dispute the closer you get to detailed discussion of specific works of art. The only difference between these and "modern art" is that modern art as a temporal category is still open-ended: it is, by one definition, simply the art of the present day. But it also includes the early paintings of Matisse and Malevich, Braque's Cubist collages, and the first building designs by Frank Lloyd Wright--products of a world that now feels very distant indeed, separated from us by two world wars, the atomic bomb, and the Internet. The words "modern art" have soaked up so much history that they can never again mean what they once meant (or at least, not with the same heady conviction): shockingly new, bewilderingly progressive, utterly of the present moment, unprecedented-though they still encompass that. A Short History ofHistory of Modern Art Just as "modern" is a many-layered term, this book, now in its fifth edition, has a history of its own. As the term "modern art" has broadened and been reinterpreted over time, successive scholars, editors, and specialist contributors have amended and added to Harvey H. Arnason's original text, which Arnason himself fully revised some years after the book was first published in 1969. This has been a process not only of fine-tuning and updating information but also of revisiting much of Arnason's material in the context of a scholarly and educational environment that has changed significantly from the one in which he wrote. There are parallels to this process in other cultural arenas, for example in the reorganization and reinterpretation of museum and gallery displays. The core of the collection remains the same, the objects have the same indelible presence and fascination, but, juxtaposed with new acquisitions and displayed under different lighting conditions, they lead viewers to look at them in different (sometimes very different) ways. In this sense, while this new edition ofHistory of Modern Artcontains much added material, it is still essentially Arnason's creation. This Preface offers a brief investigation into the marathon staying-power of his original endeavor, even through successive revisions have seen the book evolve over the years to take account of new directions in art and art history. After more than three decades and four new editions, Arnason's vision remains the core of this standard work of art historical reference. The Art of Looking Arnason was Professor and Chairman of the University of Minnesota's art department from 1947 to 1961, and he had a long association with New York's Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum as its Vice President for Art Administration. He embarked onHistory of Modern Artrelatively late in life. The project was conceived and intended as a long-term landmark--the first book of its kind--and it drew on the experience of his distinguished career as an art historian. Two deep-rooted convictions underpin Arnason'sHistory:first, that understanding art is a matter of fundamental importance; second, that the way to learn about art is to look for yourself. His Preface unequivocally emphasized his belief in the importance of the individual's face-to-face experience of art--a belief that, as he saw it, gave the book its rationale and its structure: The thesis of this book, insofar as it has a thesis, is that in the study of art the only primary evidence is the work of art itself. Everything that has been said about it, even by the artist himself, may be important, but it remains secondary evidence. Everything that we can